They don’t make movies like "Rat Race" anymore: large ensemble
screwball comedies packed with sight gags, frenetic pace, and an
all-star cast on the zany road trip from hell in pursuit of untold
riches. Of course, there's a reason why they don't make movies like
this any more. However, luckily for all of us, "Rat Race" has more in
common with "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" (upon which it is loosely
based) than "Cannonball Run" and its ilk.

In "Rat Race" , directed by Jerry Zucker (one-third of the team that
brought you "Airplane!" and "The Naked Gun" franchises) from a script
by Andy Breckman ("Sgt. Bilko"), eccentric casino owner and high roller
Donald Sinclair (John Cleese) chooses six strangers at random for a
race from Vegas to Silver City, New Mexico. Waiting at the finish line
is $2 million and the only rule is there are no rules.

The movie kicks into high gear when inept confidence men Duane and
Blaine Cody (Seth Green and Vince Vieluf) destroy the airport radar
tower, forcing all teams to seek alternate routes to New Mexico.
Ordinary joe Nick (Breckin Meyer) teams up with crazy helicopter pilot
Tracy (Amy Smart), down-on-his-luck football ref Owen (Cuba Gooding
Jr.) masquerades as the driver of a motor coach full of Lucille Ball
impersonators, family man Randy (Jon Lovitz) and his wife (Kathy
Najimy) and two kids (Brody Smith and Jillian Marie Hubert) end up
hijacking Adolph Hitler's touring car, reunited mother and long-lost
daughter Vera (Whoopi Goldberg) and Merrill (Lanei Chapman) have a run
-n with The Squirrel Lady (Kathy Bates), and narcoleptic foreigner
Enrico Pollini (Rowan Atkinson) hitches a ride with a homicidal
ambulance driver (Wayne Knight). Modes of transport are gained and lost
at a breakneck pace, and of course all parties converge on Silver City
simultaneously in a frenzy of greed.

Aided by a well-paced script that darts between cast members and
Sinclair's group of high rollers (who will gamble on anything from how
much a hooker will charge a particularly kinky john to which hotel maid
hanging from a curtain rod will loose her grip first) until the
jam-packed finish, and encumbered by only a few crawl-under-the-couch
excruciating scenes (one involving Jon Lovitz's Hitler impression at a
WWII vet convention, the rest mainly involving a talking Jersey cow),
"Rat Race" at its best is an entertaining zany comedy, perfect for a
rainy Saturday afternoon. At its worst, it’s contrived and silly, as
outrageous coincidences ensure that everything that can possibly go
wrong will, in the hopes that hilarity ensues.

A hit or miss endeavor, it is nevertheless terrifically entertaining in
the group scenes to watch comedians like Cleese, Goldberg, Green, and
Lovitz ply their craft with great abandon. Relative newcomer Smart
shines as jilted pilot Tracy, and Atkinson as guileless Italian Pollini
who lacks the greed of the rest of the ensemble but instead seems
genuinely excited merely to be in the race adds much-needed charm.
While Vieluf, who mumbles through the film thanks to a do-it-yourself
tongue piercing, can be a bit tiresome, he and Green (who performed
almost all of their own stunts) gamely fling themselves about with
great abandon, dangling from radar towers and hot air balloons.

Touted as a special collector's edition, the extras are only slightly
disappointing. The deleted scenes include a wisely-cut sequence
involved Cuba Gooding and a pro wrestler in a double-wide track house
on a flatbed truck, and more of the high rollers, talking cow, and the
Lucys. In lieu of commentary tracks, the viewer instead gets "Jerry and
Andy Call the Actors" during which each of the principal cast are
called from the sound recording studio in Santa Monica. As the writer
and director tell each star how awful and boring the commentary they
were recording was, the audience is left to wish they had been given
the chance to decide that, as the film itself is barely discussed, and
few anecdotes are shared that weren't already covered in the deleted
scenes, gag reel or "making of" featurette. Aside from the
entertainment factor of picturing Cuba Gooding naked waiting to step
into the shower, or Jon Lovitz hanging up on his director (twice), the
novelty of this particular gag wears thin very quickly.

The "making of" featurette covers most of the main cast (although Seth
Green nabs the lion's share of the screen, and rightly so, as he is
wickedly funny) and goes into some of the more complicated stunts, but
on the whole, it feels more like a 22-minute trailer. Each cast member
discusses how much fun they had making the film, when more time could
have been spent chronically the actual production. The interview with
Zucker and Breckman, which focuses primarily on the script itself,
makes up for this only slightly. It's obvious from the easy working
relationship and their obvious affection for one another that the
writer and director are longtime collaborators, even if this is the
first joint project produced.

The animated menus are simple and easy to navigate, and all of the
extras are laid out logically and intuitively. The video transfer is
very good, although not stunning. The picture is clear and sharp, and
the colors are excellent, particularly the flesh tones and black
levels. The audio mix is very good, particularly during the helicopter
scenes. Dialogue is crisp and clear and easy to understand when it's
meant to be (obviously, no sound mix in the world is going to help
audiences understand Vieluf's character), with dialogue coming through
the mains and score and effects in the mains and rears. While not a
must-own DVD by any means, the entertaining "Rat Race" harks back to a
another era.